Stuffed Plush Panthers

There is not one animal that is called a black panther. The term black panther refers to a black(melanistic) member of the Panthera family, or big cats. This means that a panther could be a leopard, jaguar, lion or tiger. Black tigers were common until the turn of the 20th century. The last marbled black tiger ever known was killed in 1992 in the cane fields of India. There has never been a known high occurence of black lions, probably due to their habitat and the extreme heat a black lion would endure. This leaves melanistic leopards and jaguars. The term melanism does not mean that they are actually black, but that they are "full of color". If you view a melanistic leopard or jaguar in good sunlight, you can see that they are acutally a very dark brown with black spots.

Their are no wild black panthers living in North America.

The dark color of the panthers is advantageous for them to hide in the dark forest or jungle and to hunt at night. Commonly, leopards and jaguars are a golden yellow with black spots. The leopard's yellow and black spotted pattern works very well to help hide them in the open grasslands of savannas. The melanistic color variety happens only about 5% of the time. Both color variations can be born to the same litter since it is a recessive gene.

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Stuffed Panther

If you would like to find information on real panthers, we suggest the following links: